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Week 1 edcMOOC

Thank god they pulled the Fundamentals of Online Education. I am going to have to unenroll in Modern and the Post Modern (which kills me) and struggle along with ETMOOC which I has really grown on me.
I love EDCMOOC and I want to focus on this experience. I'm learning so much about tools, teaching approaches, connectivism and constructionism (we are really doing it here in edcmooc) and also some new insights into digital culture and teaching through the content for week 1. I love my frainger buddies and my other moocing pals. What a good MOOC, what a huge success for the team in Edinburgh. Makes me proud to be a Scot (well not really, but I thought I'd put that in.

Resources and notes

This week we will do two things: first we will have our
opening ‘film festival’ in which we will look at some short films which
represent - in very different ways - the theme of utopia-dystopia which is our
main focus in this block. Then, after doing some reading which gives us a
useful theoretical perspective for understanding how utopic-dystopic visions
inform our relationship to technology, we will look back at some early examples
of writing on e-learning, dating from between 1998 and 2002.

The aim here is to take something of an historical approach,
and by looking back at debates that have been formative for the field of online
education to throw some light on their relationship to popular digital culture,
and on the debates we are currently having around the current and future state
of digital education. Throughout this first week, ask yourself: what echoes or
suggestions of current educational debates can you see and hear in these
resources? What has changed?

Many strongly utopian or dystopian arguments seek to explain
social, cultural or educational change in primarily technological terms. This
is known as ‘technological determinism’, and you will read about this in the
‘ideas and interpretations’ part of this week. This perspective says that technology
is not a ‘tool’ - it actually drives change and creates society, not the other
way around. Even if you haven’t tried to identify determinist positions before,
we predict that, by the end of this week, you will start to see these lines of
thinking cropping up in all sorts of places!

Popular cultures

Film 1: Bendito Machine III (6:35)

Film 2: Inbox (8:37)

This animated film tells the story of technological
development in terms of ritual and worship - the characters in the film treat
each new technology as god-like, appearing from the sky and causing the
immediate substitution of the technology before it. What is this film
suggesting are the ecological and social implications of an obsession or
fixation on technology? Do the film’s characters have any choice in relation to
their technologies? What are the characteristics of various technologies as
portrayed in this film?

Inbox is a quirky representation of the ways in which
web-based technology connects people, the limitations of those connections, and
the nature of communication in a mediated world. Depending on how you interpret
the relationship between the two main characters, and the ending, you might
argue that this is a utopian account, or a dystopian one - what do you think,
and why?

Film 3: Thursday (7:34)

Film 4: New Media (2:21)

Watch on Vimeo

Thursday depicts a tension between a natural world and a
technological world, with humans caught between the two. What message is the
film presenting about technology? What losses and gains are described? Who or
what has ‘agency’ in this film?

A very short, very grim representation of the effects of
technology on humanity. There are definite visual echoes of “Bendito Machine
III” here - what similarities and differences can you identify between the two
films?

Finally: There are many utopian and dystopian stories about
technology told in popular films from Metropolis to the Matrix. Can you think
of an example and describe or share it in the discussion board, on your blog,
or on Twitter?

(Please note that this reading is a web essay, but people
have been experiencing access problems, so we are providing it as a PDF. An
alternative, web-based version is available via the Wayback Machine.)

Chandler’s web essay explores the concept and history of
technological determinism, which he defines as ‘seek[ing] to explain social and
historical phenomena in terms of one principal or determining factor’ -
technology. Chandler calls this theory ‘reductive’, and points out that as a
way of understanding social phenomena, reductionism is often criticised as
being overly simplistic. This is especially the case when determinists become
‘technocentric’ - ‘trying to account for almost everything in terms of
technology'. He introduces concepts such as ‘reification’; ‘autonomy’; and
‘universalism’, as elements of technological determinism. Importantly for our
purposes, he also indicates how we can identify when a determinist position is
being taken, even if an author or speaker doesn’t make it explicit:

The assumptions of technological determinism can usually be
easily in spotted frequent references to the 'impact' of technological
'revolutions' which 'led to' or 'brought about', 'inevitable', 'far reaching',
'effects', or 'consequences' or assertions about what 'will be' happening
'sooner than we think' 'whether we like it or not'.

The resources below contain some language like this, and you
will probably start to notice it elsewhere. The relationship between
technological determinism and utopian and dystopian accounts is one we’d like
you to consider and discuss as you engage in the readings and films during the
rest of this week and next week.

Now that you know more about technological determinism, you
may find it useful to explore two other perspectives that are common in
discussions about the web and e-learning. Dahlberg describes three orientations
towards the internet:

Uses determination: technology is shaped and takes meaning
from how individuals and groups choose to use it. Technology itself is neutral.
An example of this way of thinking can be seen in the educational mantra: ‘The
pedagogy must lead the technology’.

Technological determination: technology ‘produces new
realities’, new ways of communicating, learning and living, and its effects can
be unpredictable. This is the position Chandler explores in detail in our core
reading.

Social determination: technology is determined by the
political and economic structures of society. Questions about ownership and
control are key in this orientation.

Which of these perspectives do you lean towards in your
understanding of the relationship between technology and pedagogy? Can you
point to instances in society or in your own context where this stance is
necessary or useful?

Dahlberg argues that none of these perspectives, on its own,
is enough to explain everything that needs to be explained about the internet.
Each is useful, and each is overstated. Depending on the questions we need to
answer, different approaches may be necessary. The same could be said about
e-learning - that we need more complexity, more nuance, than any one
determinist position can offer us. It’s therefore extremely useful to be able
to identify these positions, and in particular to know what we are dealing with
when grand narratives are told about how great, or how terrible, technology is.

Perspectives on education

Daniel, J. (2002). Technology is the Answer: What was the
Question? Speech from Higher Education in the Middle East and North Africa,
Paris, Institut du Monde Arabe, 27-29 May
2002.http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=5909&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

In this decade-old speech, Professor Daniel, at the time the
UNESCO Assistant Director for Education, offered the view that ‘in all parts of
the world evolving technology is the main force that is changing society’ (a model
technological determinist position, you’ll observe!). He argued that, despite
popular opinion, education was not exempt from these changes, nor should it be.
Indeed, technology could solve the three most pressing problems of education:
access, quality and cost. His praise of open universities directly prefigures
the current fascination with MOOCs, and you will recognise many of the same
arguments about economies of scale at play. He asks his audience to be critical
in assessing the claims that are made about educational technology and what it
can accomplish. Using Daniel’s four “b”s - bias, bull, breadth and balance -
what observations can you make about his utopian arguments about education?
What currency do they continue to have in this field?

Noble’s piece, still a classic 15 years on, shows just how
long debates about the consequences of digital education have been circulating.
In contrast to Daniel’s speech, the orientation here is clearly dystopic. Where
Noble frames ‘administrators and commercial partners’ as being in favour of
‘teacherless’ digital education, and ‘teachers and students’ as being against
it, these divisions have never been clear, and they certainly aren’t now. Why
does Noble say that technology is a ‘vehicle’ and a ‘disguise’ for the
commercialization of higher education? How can we relate this early concern
with commercialism to current debates about MOOCs, for example? And how are
concerns about ‘automation’ and ‘redundant faculty’ still being played out
today?

And there’s more....

You may find it interesting to return to two very well-known
pieces of work which have been, in their way, highly influential in the field
of online education, and think about them again in terms of the perspectives
we’ve been looking at. What kind of determinist position do they take? To what
extent are they utopic or dystopic visions of the future? Why have the ideas
they represent been so readily taken up and distributed within all educational
sectors?

Sparking extensive debate, while working its way into common
usage, Prensky’s metaphor of the native and the immigrant is one of the
best-known accounts of the effects of the digital upon education. Offering a
narrative of ‘native’ young people’s seamless integration with technology, and
the revolutionary changes that information technology has brought, Prensky
warns ‘immigrant’ teachers that they face irrelevance unless they figure out
how to adapt their methods and approaches to new generations of learners. When
reading this paper, try to identify the strategies that Prensky uses to make
his argument - how does the language he uses work to persuade the reader? Who
are ‘we’ and who are ‘they’? What associations do you have with the idea of the
‘native’ and the ‘immigrant’, and how helpful are these in understanding
teacher-student relationships?

Wesch, M. (2007). The Machine is Us/ing Us? (4:33)

Watch on YouTube

You will likely have seen this video many times - it’s a
now-classic representation of the difference of the digital and the history of
the web. Whether you are watching it for the first time or not, try considering
it again from the perspectives we’ve been exploring. What is being left out of
the story of the internet here, and from what position is this story being
constructed?